A Sense of Familiarity
by Ellall
Summary: Takes place during Part2. Sakura tries to convince Sasuke to return to Konoha.


Note: this is my first ever post, and the first ever fanfic I've let other people read.

Takes place in some random-ass battle setting. Everyone else is momentarily taken up in fights, and Sakura and Sasuke have a quiet moment. NO . NOT THAT KIND OF QUIET MOMENT. She tries to get him to come back to Konoha.

If you want to, ignore the last paragraph. It's hah-hah material anyway, and it is midnight in Texas, cut me some slack. Note to self: that sounds like the title of a good country-western. 'Midnight in Texas.' EDIT: by the time I figure out how to upload this it'll probably be 2 A.M. . . .

The real fic isn't SasuSaku, or at least not as I envisioned it . . . take it as you will. This is kinda also an exercise with dialogue and trying to pin down the dynamics of deep friendship. If you think I did a good job with Sasuke and Sakura, then maybe I'll move onto Sasuke and Naruto, ho boy, dynamics galore. Oh, and I haven't really seen much of the canon itself, manga or anime, but I'm a sucker for spoilers, so I know about 'Sasuke and the Bucket' allllll the way to 'Who the hell is Uchiha Madara?' and most things in-between. Please tell me if something seems out of whack, other than the Itachi-Orochimaru connection . . . that's slightly AU. Will be elaborated on later. If it feels like I'm not entirely Here, On Earth. . . well . . . I'm not a Jay Leno or David Letterman kind of girl: midnight is never kind to me.

A Sense of Familiarity

"No, Sakura, I can't leave . . ."

"Because you still stake your entire identity on a single person?"

His voice was harsh as he croaked, "What did you just say?"

"You – you – what will you be after your revenge? If you give everything up there will be nothing left afterwards! Is that what you want, to live for one single purpose and then virtually _die_, becoming a _puppet_? Don't you know what you've been _doing?_"

"It isn't like – like that anymore," growing suddenly desperate. "I know that, that I used to judge myself entirely by Itachi, but know Orochimaru –"

"Now Orochimaru pulls your leash," she half-sobbed, half-hissed.

"More than you know," he admitted.

She drew back, startled.

"I won't let you go until I at least tell you that Orochimaru, he told Itachi, told him to –"

"Told him to murder our family. That that's how you gain power"

She gaped at him. "You _know_? . . . Wha . . . why are you staying?"

"My curse seal _is_ a leash. Orochimaru can do whatever he wants with me because he knows the seal is painful . . . but it's the only way to use my strength now."

"Come back . . . and . . . and we could find a way to help you again . . ."

"It's already interlocked with my chakra network. When Kakashi's seal broke . . . it was like Naruto releasing the Kyuubi's power . . . and now, it doesn't matter what _I_ want, because my body has grown _used_ to it. Only Orochimaru can control the progress enough so that my, my body doesn't break apart . . . if I go, I don't know what will happen."

"But I once helped you stop it – please, please tell me you haven't forgotten."

"No . . . . . . . I think about it all the time . . . . . . We were just kids though, and . . . . I think about what you did in that Forest and I don't understand how it helped, but it certainly won't now."

Until this part, Sakura had done job of holding back tears. It took her fine awareness of her chakra (_intuitive_) and also her medical knowledge (_learned_) to feel shock coming. Fight-or-flight panic overcame her. She trembled.

"You don't know that," she cried. "We can help, I _know _we can – "

She reached out and seized Sasuke's hand, nearly breaking it in her unchecked grip. He did nothing to stop her. " – So come with me, please . . . "

Sasuke opened his mouth with a peculiar expression hijacking the usually hostile lines of his face. Sakura recognized with a surge in her heartbeat (thumpthumpthump_thump_) that Sasuke's face was the most honest she had ever seen it, and it was softening to the idea of returning.

_He just might come, _she thought.

"Please," she whispered.

He shifted closer to Sakura with familiarity not felt between them since Team 7 was a bunch of hard-knocked genin(naïve kids) and their jounin sensei ('I think you're a bunch of idiots,' he said).

She watched with fascination through the distant clarity of medical shock as Sasuke began the process needed for speaking: the expansion of the diaphragm, and the clearing of the throat, the first letter hanging half-formed on his lips. . .

It was then that Orochimaru's snake-scouts found them. Orochimaru appeared inches to the right of Sakura, to the left of Sasuke, using Kakashi's familiar disappear/reappear technique turned nightmarishly alien.

She won't be able to persuade Sasuke for a while yet, but Sakura knows, even as she screams, that there is more hope in the world than there ever was before. Hope is just as good as a curse seal or a Kyuubi to increase strength.

END FIC

_(Hope_ is why Orochimaru won't know what hit him. As a Leaf ninja and a Sannin with Tsunade and Jiraiya (mainly _because_ he watched Tsunade and wink Jiraiya) he was careful, even then, to never get on the bad side of a woman's emotions. BUT, he doesn't know Sakura as well as he thinks he does (the egotistical bastard), and there are some things that one can't learn the horror of it all by example. Getting the tar beaten out of you is one. Getting the tar beaten out of by a murderously emotional kunoichiskilled in medical is another. Sakura knows the vital organs; Tsunade has taught her well. And Orochimaru is long overdue for a real near-death experience. No human is immortal; life is a cycle. He should be reminded of that by who but a _cherry blossom_?)


End file.
